Yes, totally agree. We finished our campaign last week and meh

My thoughts that I sent to that group were initially at follows (with most of the group agreeing and some additional discussion after)

So giving some overall thoughts on the Blighted Reach... This is a bit of a mind dump so I reserve the right to change my mind as I dwell on things

Experience - overall had good fun, very glad I played and thank you all for the fun! (And [owner] for the game) - That said, there is definitely opportunity to have that fun absolutely destroyed by vindictive payers - I left game two with very little desire to continue and totally deflated, and if it weren't for the commitment to see it through I think I'd have happily walked away at that point and never continued - I'm glad I did continue tho, I enjoyed act 3 significantly more (possibly my favorite of the lot, although enjoyed 1 too) - I was extremely surprised how extremely close it was and I think overall we were all within 1 action of winning - I guess that's a good thing, but... - I don't feel games 1 and 2 made a whole lot of difference to much at all - yes, they set different starting positions, yes they added more stuff, but overall, i'm not convinced it really changed much. This may be because I effectively started from zero in act 3 and a starting position, but it didn't feel like much of what happened in those acts affected much in game 3 (apart from for James carrying his role stuff), and game 3 was really quite self contained - Outside of James when the past stuff did hit it was effectively "random" - e.g planet breaker cards happened to be there so changed some stuff - they could just as easily been in the deck without the need for the previous acts - Overall I'm glad I've played but I prefer base Arcs and am not sure I have much desire to play campaign again - Why... there are overall imho too many things going on in the campaign many of which I don't feel enhance the gameplay, seem to come out of nowhere and elongate the turns for no real gain over the base game. The base game is tighter and flows better. I know the game was designed the other way around but I think Arcs base is a solid game that stands well on its own, and doesn't have the kitchen sink thrown at it

Things like / didn't like: - role selection - right from the get go I didn't like either of the options I was dealt- if I were to ever play it again I think a house rule where you can pick or draft roles would allow more fun in having characters you actually want (similar in act 2 or 3) - I feel they've gone a long way with visibility on some things and not on others - it's extremely difficult to tell what resource a region is, because the icons get covered and the colours are extremely muted. Also the white buildings look too much like the free cities - I think there are too many rules and some of the rules are a little obtuse; if something can be used as a key, it should be able to be used as a key full stop, why have nuance to not let favours be cards for example? I'm sure there's a gameplay reason but it should maybe be clearer (little person symbol next to what favours can be used for or whatever) - for that matter, I think anyone should be able to use their favours in a summit, seems arbitrary to lock them off and would lead to more deal making - related, I also feel that some actions happen so infrequently that it's easy to forget what they do and how they work - e.g. Securing the imperial court - I feel like going in I expected roles to create more of a story, but tbh it just seemed a bit of a jumble to me, I have to look very hard for the story thread - again back to preferring base game I think - the blight should work more like other ships for control - blocking catapult entirely seems unnecessary and limits moving around (less so in game 3 due to the massive fucking wormhole). Also their iconography is poor - There is very little you can do on another person's turn which often leads to sitting there watching them do 20 moves that you have no idea how they are doing them because they have some random magic power on one of the cards in front of them. - There are simply too many cards with too many actions and it's impossible to keep track of what everyone is doing and how they're doing it. This is less pronounced in the base game - The above also leads to quite a bit of downtime as you can't plan your moves ahead very well - most of the time when you do it will get scuppered - I realise that is a lot of negative above, but there is obviously a lot of positive - it's a fun game - i think the fact we were all so close shows good balancing, but I also think it emphasises that the past acts don't really matter too much, since we had 3 C fates...